


Just As I Thought

by Spiritheart



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Scenes, Angst, Damianos and Nikandros were in Love Before, Gen, Griva loosened tongues, Jealousy, Laurent called to account, Nikandros has his say
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2020-07-25 20:55:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20032207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spiritheart/pseuds/Spiritheart
Summary: These are possible missing scenes from King’s Rising, with the premise that Damen and Nikandros were lovers and when Nik finds Damen lives, he must adjust to being supplanted by Laurent, who he initially detests but comes to admire and respect...eventually.





	1. Just As I Thought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the okton, after the griva, having seen Damen’s ruined back, Nikandros has his say. (If you ever thought Laurent needed to be little sorrier he had Damen almost flogged to death, and enjoyed it, you’ll like this. Otherwise you might not. Either way, I needed it.)
> 
>   
“Do you feel better now? Do you think your words wound me? I grew up in the Veretian court. There is nothing you can say I haven’t heard many times.” His shoulder throbbed or was it his unworthy heart? He couldn’t decide.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

Laurent stepped out to the privy. He needed to piss after all that griva. A figure of heroic proportions, in shadow, met him on the way.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said recognizing Nikandros as the torchlight hit his face.

“Disappointed? Did you take me for Damianos at first?” His dark eyes as disdainful as his voice.

They had both been drinking all night. Nikandros clearly wasn’t feeling polite.

“You overestimate my interest in Damen.” Laurent answered, his tone bland.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s true.” A low, vicious challenge vibrated in the air.

“Is it time for truth?” This was going to be too easy. Simple, loyal Nikandros wasn’t likely to be up to the mark. He gave him his lazy appraisal. Classically Akielon, handsome, too much like Damen in this moment.

“Let’s dispense with your favorite sport of baiting people.” Nikandros stepped closer, his large body radiating threat.

“Then say what you have to say. You don’t like me. I had Damen almost flayed to death.” He recited this in a bored drawl.

“Because he killed your brother.” Nikandros said, ridicule thick in his voice. “In a duel of honor. A concept it seems you cannot grasp. _You _had your men strap him to the cross and whip him almost to death.” His face twisted, disgust roiling in his words. “Let’s not forget your favorite part. How much you enjoyed it.”

“Hurts that much to imagine it?”

“I don’t have to imagine the flaying. I saw your proud handiwork written across his back.”

“Is it the fact he sucked my cock and loved it the part that bothers you the most? Jealous?”

He knew Nikandros almost hit him then, alliance or no.

Niknadros’s eyes raked over his body, lingering on his groin with contempt and returned to deliver his snarling indictment, “I see. That’s what it takes to make you hard.”

Laurent paused, considering the tempting possibility of pushing him to violence.

“It must be difficult to not be able to fight me. To get your hands on me.” His taunt turning into a smile like a scythe in the moonlight.

Nikandros said it then, “It is difficult to not to kill you where you stand.”

“I’m not that easy to kill. It’s been tried many times by my Uncle. ”

“Yes, and without Damen he would have succeeded.”

“He told you that?” A curious twist in his chest.

“He doesn’t have to. I know him.” Said as though it was obvious, but naturally wouldn’t be to Laurent.

“Oh yes, boyhood friends and all that.” He was wearying of this. A vicious voice in his head agreed with everything Nikandros had said and yet he didn’t feel it. Griva was good for that it seemed.

“Daminaos won you a victory at Charcy. While you cowered at Fortaine.” Nikandros drove on, the words filled with loathing Laurent knew he’d had to swallow for days. “How much of what you’ve accomplished is due to Damen? I would venture that without him you wouldn’t have made it beyond the outskirts of Arles.”

“Do you feel better now? Do you think your words wound me? I grew up in the Veretian court. There is nothing you can say I haven’t heard many times.” His shoulder throbbed or was it his unworthy heart? He couldn’t decide.

“That doesn’t stop them from being true.” Nikandros words like the final shovel of dirt on a grave.

“As much as I’ve enjoyed this, I have to piss. Get out of my way.”

Nikandros moved then to leave and as he did, he hit solidly into Laurent, shouldering him out of his way. Laurent let out a hiss of pain.

Nikandros didn’t looked back, but Laurent heard his voice carry through the dark, rich with satisfaction. “Just as I thought.” 

Laurent leaned back against the privy building. He was dizzy with drink and no small part by Nikandros’s surprising efficiency at cutting him to size. A wave of longing, of breath stealing need hit him. It had a name. Damianos.

“


	2. As We Always Have

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is dark and full of angst. Nikandros and Damen have it out.
> 
>   
“I thought you were dead!" The words rip from his heart.
> 
> "And before I could even fully grasp you were returned to me, even while the joy of finding you alive was a miracle I could hardly conceive as true, you demanded my unquestioning loyalty. And I gave it. While our men were massacred at Charcy, while our ally the Prince of Vere abandoned the field. After you stripped me of Delpha. Still I gave it! But when I saw your flayed back and you defended him!” His throat is shredded, raw with emotion and swallowed blood. “There are limits Damen, even for you!”
> 
> He says it once more, almost to himself, “I thought you were dead.” He reels away, panting and leans against the hearth, closing his eyes for a moment as the room spins.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

When the Prince returns to the hall, he seems diminished, his golden radiance tarnished. Nikandros is satisfied it is from his own brutal words. Brutal words fairly given for Laurent’s brutal act.

Upon seeing the scars on Damen’s previously flawless back and realizing he’d been whipped so severely as to mark him so, he had wanted to kill Laurent. He still did.

How sweet it had been to flay his self-satisfied arrogance from him with the whip strike of his words.

Even so, he must continue to watch and tolerate the spectacle of Damen’s blatant attraction for the Veretian. He knew the power of that weighted gaze. Once, not even so long ago, it had been directed towards him.

His brooding is interrupted by Makedon shouting, “And you Kyroi, will you join us on the hunt as well?”

His answer is a low undisguised claiming, “If my King is riding how could I not?”

Makedon booms his drunken approval, “Your reputation as a huntsman precedes you. It is said no one is your match. Tell us of the time you were cornered by two wild boars and killed them both.”

Damen’s pride is evident as he says, “I had fallen and was pinned under my horse. If not for Nik I would be dead.” Laurent’s eyes slide to him and back to Damen, a shadow in his gaze.

“Ah well, the King exaggerates. Damen,” he says purposefully, “and I have hunted together since childhood. We have saved each other many times at the hunt, in battle and from the wiles of importuning lovers.”

Damen lets loose an easy delighted laugh and pulls him into a messy embrace. Then to him alone, “Nik, how good it is to have you by my side again. I have missed you.” The burning in his chest lightens. “As I have missed you.” He is entirely captured by Damen’s warm affectionate touch and gaze. His pulse leaps. Fuck. He is still so easily snared.

Laurent, abruptly, but with perfect timing, stands too carefully and makes his excuses. “I may need some help walking.” Damen is there, and the Prince leans into him. Makedon lolls in his seat, bleary eyed as he wishes them a good night. All around revelers are finding their beds or sprawled across tables and couches. Laurent and Damen leave arm in arm as they go towards the Prince’s private chambers.

Nikandros moves to the fire, another cup of griva in his hand. He sips it slowly, welcoming the blurring of his edges, the ability it offers to dreamily ignore thoughts of Damen bedding the beautiful, drink loosened Prince.

“Why are you still here?”

He blinks up and it is Damen looming above him.

“I might ask you the same.”

“Ah, you thought I was bedding the Prince. You know me better. I would not take such an advantage. And he would hate himself and me in the morning.”

“We spoke.” He says, watching the flames.

“You spoke with Laurent?” Damen says Laurent as if his name tastes like honey.

“Yes. I told him what I thought of him. By the privy appropriately enough.” His own voice a dark thing rising from the blackness of his heart.

“Nik…what did you say?”

He turns on Damen fiercely, his mind cleared by rage. “What you should have. That he is contemptible. That what he did to you was monstrous. But no, instead you, you are in love with him. You fawn on him like the slave he made you.”

He is dragged roughly to his feet. He doesn’t resist as Damen’s fist slams full force to his jaw. He staggers back, tasting blood and laughs. Pain fills his emptiness and he welcomes it.

“Come on then. Hit me for telling you the truth. Or because you’re frustrated you aren’t fucking him. Because you are too honorable.” That was in fact too ironic.

‘You go too far!” Damen snarls, grabbing him by the throat. Nikandros breaks his hold, shoving him back.

“I thought you were dead!" The words rip from his heart. 

"And before I could even fully grasp you were returned to me, even while the joy of finding you alive was a miracle I could hardly conceive as true, you demanded my unquestioning loyalty. And I gave it. While our men were massacred at Charcy, while our ally the Prince of Vere abandoned the field. After you stripped me of Delpha. Still I gave it! But when I saw your flayed back and you defended him!” His throat shredded with emotion and swallowed blood.

“There are limits Damen, even for you!”

He says it once more, almost to himself, “I thought you were dead.” He reels away, panting and leans against the hearth, closing his eyes for a moment as the room spins. 

Damen says, pleading. “You don’t understand.”

“No,” he says, bitterness as sharp on his tongue as blood. “And you have been so besotted, so distracted, you have not deigned to explain.” 

“I’m sorry, old friend.” Damen says, reaching out. His touch now gentle on his bruised jaw and split lip. “I’m sorry for this too.” Nikandros wrenches away from his touch, too close to that of the lover he had once been. That touch, that had often been a prelude to a kiss. He steps back, Damen makes a move to follow but he warns him off.

“You take much for granted. I owe you fealty. But I do not owe you friendship.” He swipes the blood dripping from his mouth and suddenly his anger is doused. He bows, “Exalted,” and turns his back on his King.

Silence. That then is his answer. His own earlier words return to mock him. _Just as I thought_.

He returns to his rooms. His favorite Phaedre is waiting but after disrobing he sends her to her own bed. Replaying his conversation with Damen over and over, he searches for something in his words or manner beyond fondness. He can’t pretend he saw any spark of the desire he’d once received so openly from Damen. His calling him, “old friend,” had been the death knell to his private hopes.

He surrenders to memories, from early days of awkward kisses and rutting against each other in desperation to the refinement of later years when they each knew how to string out the other’s pleasure to an art.

He is immediately hard and considers calling back Phaedre. But this was too private, this wretched longing for Damen warring with the emptiness gouged from his heart. He kicks off the sheet and imagines his own hand as Damen’s.

He is so far gone he doesn’t hear his approaching steps until a rough voice says, “Nik.” Damen appears like his lust filled fantasy, the moonlight illuminating his bold and beloved face.

He stills his hand but slowly continues stroking his cock. He lets his longing and need show in his face, in his rocking, arching movements. He has never hidden that from Damen and he won’t even now. Damen’s cock rises against his skirt but he remains tautly restrained and out of reach.

He will not ask, but offers his desire, as he loses himself in Damen’s wide eyes and his own pleasure. When he finally comes it was with a low cry of defeat wrenched from his soul.

Damen said, “Never think my love for you has changed. It is I who have changed.

"_Everything_ has changed, between us Damen. I have never been on the outside of your life before. We always came first with each other no matter which lovers we took. Don’t pretend nothing has changed!” Did Damen not realize this?

“We aren’t together. I killed his brother after all. There may be no way forward for us.” His answer is like a dull strike on a bell, once melodious and now discordant. 

“You have never let small obstacles like that dissuade you. It might be easier if he was worthy of you. Or maybe it wouldn’t.” HIs bitter laugh follows.

“Hate him for now. I understand why. I will tell you a thing though. There is a very good reason he did not show up at Charcy. He isn’t a coward. Very much the opposite.”

Nikandros sits up, casually wiping away his own spend with the sheet. “If you say so. Let me hate him just a bit longer before I hear you toss him accolades. And leave off naming me old friend. When last I saw you we were lovers. Let me adjust to losing you Damen.”

“I…”

Nik cut him off. “Please, no apologies.”

Then he is tired, so tired and he will not bear this conversation another moment.

“It’s very late Damen. Find your own bed.” He pulls up the sheet and turns his back.

A sudden weight on the bed, and Damen’s warm hand on his shoulder. “Nik, there is so much that has changed me. After, after all this, I promise I will tell you of it. As we always have.” He says it in that quiet private tone that Nik knows means he needs to unburden himself.

Nikandros response is immediate, to comfort, to reassure. Seeing Damen’s wild, wet eyes, he offers his embrace. Damen folds into him and he feels it, everything underneath. The level where only ever he has been let in. Where Damen puts the things that are too much. Here for a space he can be just Damen with his Nikandros.

He comfortingly strokes his back, wanting to erase the scars. To be the one who stood between him and the whip.

“As we always have,” he breathes into Damen’s neck.


End file.
